Articles by: James Swackhammer
SOLIDWORKS MBD has come a long way since it initially released back in 2015. Adding dimensions or using existing design dimensions to publish directly into a manufacturable PDF saves time and interpretation errors. SOLIDWORKS 2019 has now added more features to the already innovative PDF. You can now add security measures to the 3D PDF.…
Welcome to part 4 of this adventure of making a large sheet metal HVAC duct. In Part 3 we saved the bodies, converting them into sheet metal parts and exported as DXF/DWG. In this final part I’m going to show you how to modify the exported parts in DraftSight to get a laser/plasma friendly part…
Designing 90° Sheet Metal HVAC Duct in SOLIDWORKS – Part 3 of 4
Welcome to part 3 of this adventure of making a large sheet metal HVAC duct. We left off in part 2 splitting the single body duct into 7 bodies. Today I’m going to demonstrate how to save the bodies out and how to convert into the desired thickness of gauge sheet metal. Using the “Split…
A once sore subject with SOLIDWORKS MBD is “Cosmetic Thread” appearance or lack of. Well, SOLIDWORKS MBD 2019 takes care of that. Now when you save out a PDF you get to see the thread picture. If you are not aware of Cosmetic Threads, please take a look at a couple of our SOLIDWORKS articles…
Designing 90° Sheet Metal HVAC Duct in SOLIDWORKS – Part 2 of 4
Welcome to Designing 90° Sheet Metal HVAC Duct in SOLIDWORKS – Part 2. In the previous part we had created the basic model for the duct, the required sizes are set with a basic sketch, and a circular profile sweep was used to create the model. In this second part we’re going to cut a…
Designing a 90° Sheet Metal HVAC Duct in SOLIDWORKS – Part 1 of 4
Designing and manufacturing a duct for a ventilation system is easy, right? With this series I’m going to start with simple, but most commonly asked for in a HVAC system design, the 90° bend: I’m going to break down the SOLIDWORKS creation process into these 4 parts: How to sketch and model the duct part…
The final chapter in my SOLIDWORKS Part Template Series is to start off with pre-made parts. If your company is one that has a set amount of jigs and fixtures, or creates similar parts all the time with some dimensional changes then pre-made SOLIDWORKS Parts is for you. One thing that could save time is…
So you created the much needed SOLIDWORKS Part template, but you can’t seemed to load it. Not to worry – I will show you how to add templates to SOLIDWORKS with an option called “File Locations”. With SOLIDWORKS open, pick on the top cog icon and click “Options”, or select Tools > Options At about…